Category Archives: legends

legends

Friday PSA

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Okay, so it’s more of a self-serving announcement. Maybe we need a new desgination for that. Maybe SSA? Anyway, here’s the deal–Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just released The Best of BCS, Year 3. Here’s the ToC:

  1. The Ghost of Shinoda Forest · Richard Parks
  2. Dying on the Elephant Road · Steve Rasnic Tem
  3. Bread and Circuses · Genevieve Valentine
  4. Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin · Adam Callaway
  5. Mr Morrow Becomes Acquainted with the Delicate Art of Squid Keeping · Geoffrey Maloney
  6. Butterfly · Garth Upshaw
  7. Red Dirt · Ian McHugh
  8. The Nine-Tailed Cat · Michael J. DeLuca
  9. Letters of Fire · Margaret Ronald
  10. Fleurs du Mal · J. Kathleen Cheney
  11. Gone Sleeping · Heather Clitheroe
  12. Dirt Witch · Eljay Daly
  13. Silent, Cold, and Still · Kris Dikeman
  14. The Angel Azrael Rode into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse · Peter Darbyshire
  15. Playing for Amarante · A.B. Treadwell
  16. The Suffering Gallery · Matthew Kressel
  17. In the Gardens of the Night · Siobhan Carroll
  18. Beloved of the Sun · Ann Leckie

 From the BCS web site: “The Best of BCS, Year Three  features such authors as Richard Parks, Garth Upshaw, Margaret Ronald, Matthew Kressel, Geoffrey Maloney, and World Fantasy Award-winner Steve Rasnic Tem.

It includes “Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin” by Adam Callaway, named to Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012, edited by Paula Guran, as well as three stories named to the Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2011 and four given Honorable Mention in Year’s Best Science Fiction 29, edited by Gardner Dozois.”

 

Special offer going on– buy The Best of BCS, Year Three from Weightless Books between now and Oct. 19 and get a free copy of Best of BCS, Year One or Best of BCS, Year Two.

You can also pick it up at all the usual places, Amazon, B&N, Smashwords…..here’s the thing–proceeds from the sale of The Best of BCS, Year Three go to pay BCS authors and artists for their work and keep the magazine going. Two subjects near and dear to my heart, it has to be understood.

Okay, commercial over. Thanks for your patience.

 

Ghosts: Recent Hauntings

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I noticed several other contributors announcing the receipt of their copies of Ghosts: Recent Hauntings yesterday. I also know that all mail coming here has to pass through the city PO before it’s sent off to the outposts, which adds a day’s delay, so I was reasonably sure that my own copies were waiting for me at the PO Box today. Sure enough.

My story’s in here somewhere. Let’s see… Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Jeff Ford, Tim Powers, John Shirley, Peter Straub, Joe R. Lansdale, James Van Pelt, Nisi Shawl, Ekaterina Sedia, Steve Rasnic Tem, Melanine Tem, Sarah Monette, Maureen McHugh, Margo Lanagan…ah! There it is, “The Plum Blossom Lantern.” Nestled safely(?) between John Langan and Stephen Jones. Paula Guran’s managed to collect quite a few talented people in here. Not sure how I managed to sneak in, but it’s too late to check tickets now.

Well, whether I deserve it or not, that story does. It’s one of my favorites of my own ghost stories, and I’ve written quite a few. See what ya’ll think. And you might as well read the rest of those guys while you’re in there. Just sayin’.

Homo Sum: Humani Nil a Me Alienum Puto

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“I am human, and nothing human is strange(meaning: irrelevant) to me (puto = I consider).”

The quote’s been attributed to everyone from Martial to Maya Angelou, but Terentius probably said it first, in the context of a play where a character uses it as justification to butt in where he really doesn’t belong. So much for the clarity of context. Anything that survives in a proverbial form outside of its original context is no longer bound by it and takes on its own shades of interpretation. Today the proverb means just what it says: “I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.”

Anyone who writes books and stories set in cultures not their own (practically anyone who writes sf or fantasy) is eventually going to get this, and whether it’s from someone “well-meaning” or an internet troll, it amounts to the same thing: “How dare you?” As in: “How dare you write from a NA viewpoint or use NA mythology as a springboard because you’re not NA, or Japanese, or Chinese, or Thai, or Mayan, or Spanish, or Basque, or Masai…” That includes the legendary or mythological past and any syncretions and accretions thereunto. Sometimes they will grant that it’s okay for a Westerner to write about ancient Greece even though most of us 1) Are Not Greek and 2) Don’t know any more about the REAL ancient Greece than anyone else does.

It doesn’t matter who it comes from, it’s pure rubbish from start to finish. We’re all human, which is one thing we all share and why we’re more alike than different even when we’re very different indeed. Which is absolutely not the same thing as saying “people are all alike.” They are most emphatically not all alike. Anyone who’s done even basic reading for historical and cultural context can figure that out, and if that doesn’t work then all they have to do is take a good look around. If that simple fact still doesn’t sink in, then they need to take up a different avocation. Continue reading →

Going, Going, Gone

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Three days ago, Amazon listed two copies of The Heavenly Fox for $19 each direct from them. As of yesterday there are still two listed, only one’s listed new at $197 and the other is listed used and priced at $99. Yeah, good luck getting those prices, but it does demonstrate something I was rather anticipating—The Heavenly Fox has sold out it in both published states. There was a 100 copy signed, numbered and DJ’d run, which sold out several months ago. I checked with the publisher and, sure enough, the second, unsigned state has also sold out. Since both were limited runs I’m not too surprised. I’m just glad it didn’t take longer.

I’ll know in a few days who it lost the Mythopoeic Award to, but in the meantime I’m getting used to the fact that, for the first time in about five years, I don’t have a single book in print at PS Publishing. Good thing the Yamada novel is coming out from them next year.

Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain

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3rd Story CollectionAs the saying goes, there are some things you’re better off not knowing. Like how sausage is made, if you really like sausage. Still, if anyone’s curious (didn’t say you were. said “if”), here’s where the title of my third story collection came from:

In 1905, Lafcadio Hearn published a collection of pieces on Japanese legend called “The Romance of the Milky Way and Other Stories.” Including therein were several tanka written on the legend of the Weaver and Herdsman (also called the Romance of the Milky Way) from an 8th Century Japanese poetry volume, the Manyoushou. Here’s Hearn’s translation of one:

Amanogawa

Ai-muki tachité,

Waga koïshi

Kimi kimasu nari

Himo-toki makéna!

[He is coming, my long-desired lord, whom I have been waiting to meet here, on the banks of the River of Heaven…. The moment of loosening my girdle is nigh!]

When I decided to do my own take on the Weaver and Herdsman legend, choosing a title was the easy part. So credit where credit’s due: Thanks to Mr. Hearn, and the ancient poets of the Manyoushou.